Latest news with #setdesign
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wardrobe Wows and Set Secrets: Michelle Stafford on How Y&R Nailed the Dumas Party Aesthetic
Dumas' party is underway on The Young and the Restless. While fans are interested in the mystery surrounding the host and the guests, the set and the wardrobes have everyone talking. One person who loves the setup for the Dumas party is actress Michelle Stafford. Aristotle Dumas' party is a big deal on Y&R. Not only will the mysterious businessman finally be revealed, but drama will ensue among guests. Since this is one of Y&R's most compelling storylines, the show went all out for the grand reveal. With the party taking place at Dumas' French chateau, the crew built new sets. Among them was a train set that most of Genoa City used to travel to France. Then there was the garden area of Dumas' mansion, complete with a maze, which guests had to go through. WATCH THIS: Did you know Soap Hub has a podcast?! Check it out here! Aside from the gorgeous sets, the wardrobe department also stunned with its fashion choices. With it being summer, many characters wore bright and comfortable clothing. The sets and the wardrobe have generated lots of buzz. While fans have mixed reactions, Stafford loves the aesthetic. On Instagram, the actress praised the crew for their work. 'Someone on X said I was channeling Fred Flintstone. Hahaha. I actually like to think I was Wilma🧡🧡🧡,' Stafford captioned a behind-the-scenes photo of the Dumas set. '@mandiline killed with all the wardrobe she had to get for all of us. Our set decorators killed with all of the sets!! Everyone worked very hard on this story. I hope you enjoy!' As Dumas' party continues, viewers will see more of the gorgeous sets and colorful wardrobe. What Dumas has in store for his guests remains a mystery. But it's going to be one party that Genoa City's elite won't ever forget.
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Anne Gainsford obituary
My godmother Anne Gainsford, who has died aged 90, was a set designer and maker of costumes and hats for stage, film and television. To me, her crowning glory was making a top hat for Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1995). Anne was delighted that the actor wore the hat with panache, but was scathing about the anachronistic 'wet shirt' scene. Top of the toppers, Anne made 12 top hats for a production of Die Meistersinger at the Royal Danish Opera (1996), and toppers for (among others) Ralph Fiennes in Onegin (1999) and Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (2004) – each meticulously researched to fit the historical date. She insisted on using period techniques and materials, sewing black on black even as her sight deteriorated. Anne was the daughter of William Gainsford, director of a mining business, the Sheffield Coal Co, and his wife, Helen (nee Fea), a keen needlepoint tapestry embroiderer. She was born at Somersby House in Lincolnshire, birthplace of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His Charge of the Light Brigade, and troops stationed nearby in the second world war, sparked Anne's lifelong obsession with soldiers' dress. During an exchange in Paris (1952), she staked out the Musée de l'Armée, thrilled by Napoleon's chapeaux and revolution and empire uniforms. She later became an expert in military and naval costumes, making bicornes for Master and Commander (2003). In wartime, Anne was evacuated to the Presentation Sisters convent school in Matlock, Derbyshire. She then attended St Mary's school, Ascot, and went to Oxford University in 1952 to study history at Lady Margaret Hall. It was a paper on the Italian Renaissance that led Anne to Perugia after she graduated in 1955, to learn Italian, and to opera – her next great passion. Back in London, she studied stage design at the Slade School of Art. In the late 1950s, Anne worked as a scene painter for 'theatrical polymath and handful' Disley Jones at the Lyric Hammersmith (The Demon Barber, 1959), moving to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon and repertory theatre. She got her big break working as design assistant to the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli on productions including Romeo and Juliet at the Teatro Romano in Verona (1964) and her first film, The Taming of the Shrew (1967). Anne set up the Richmond Studio in 1967 with a fellow designer, Patty Pope. She carved out a niche making headgear for opera and ballet, including Aida (1968) at the Royal Opera House. But from 1983 on, her work was mainly for the screen, often in liaison with the costumiers Cosprop. Anne was not married but had some tempestuous relationships. Perhaps the most notable was an intense love affair in the 1980s with the writer Sybille Bedford, whom she met at PEN International. Although she never retired, when work dried up Anne learned to restore furniture, devoted herself to her very English garden in Richmond upon Thames, and enjoyed visiting historical houses with a string of eager acolytes. Anne's brother, John, died in 2005. She is survived by two nephews, Maximilian and Guy.
New York Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
An ‘S.N.L.' Secret Weapon Retires After 50 Years
The Stiegelbauer workshop, where Stephen DeMaria coordinated the construction of sets for 'Saturday Night Live,' is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, miles from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Geographically, and in the minds of 'S.N.L.' fans, DeMaria's name was always far removed from the prestige and glamour of the show that has defined American comedy since 1975. But while most viewers have never heard of him, he has spent 50 years setting the scenes for the show's most memorable moments. And now he is done. DeMaria, known as 'Demo' in the shop, retired after the 50th season finale, May 17. The day before, the white-haired, 87-year-old carpenter was leaning over his drafting table, inspecting blueprints and fiddling with the No. 2 pencil usually found behind his ear. For DeMaria and his crew, the show had already begun. Stiegelbauer Associates Inc. is a cross between a shop class and a late-night museum: A Rainbow Room marquee hangs above a workbench; a leftover airplane set sits plastic-wrapped; photos of past sets installed in the show's Studio 8H are framed on every wall. During show weeks, sets are assembled all over the shop by an eclectic crew of craftspeople, many of whom have worked on 'S.N.L.' for decades. As the foreman, DeMaria coordinates the teams assigned to build the sets designed at 30 Rock. Then he oversees the construction, moseying through the shop and kicking up sawdust with his cane as he checks in at the workstations. The cane was the result of an injury he suffered at an end-of-season celebration last year: After a night of tearing up the dance floor, he fell off a curb and broke his hip. 'The best time of my life is the 'S.N.L.' parties,' he said. 'I'll be on the dance floor when I get there, and I won't leave until 5 in the morning.' His favorite, he said, was the 2012 end-of-season party, after an episode hosted by Mick Jagger. 'He was dancing all over the studio, so I got involved,' DeMaria recalled. 'I was dancing with Mick Jagger!' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Arab News
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
‘The Pakistani Vibe': Inside the imagined worlds of renowned art director Hashim Ali
LAHORE: Tucked away in a quiet lane in Pakistan's cultural capital of Lahore, Hashim Ali's studio feels less like a workspace and more like a time capsule from the Mughal era. Large Persian rugs are spread out on the floors and ornate jharokhas overlook walls painted in beige and maroon and covered in wood panels and miniature paintings, creating a world suffused with nostalgia and opulence. Every corner of the studio reflects the vision of an art director who doesn't just design sets but builds atmosphere. The space is both sanctuary and stage, where centuries-old aesthetics come vividly to life in the service of modern, visual storytelling. One of Pakistan's most renowned Pakistani visual artists and art directors, Ali is a Visual Communication Design graduate from the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) institute in Lahore. Over the years, he has come to be known for his work in fashion, film, and music and is celebrated for his creative vision and attention to detail, particularly in creating visually stunning and intricate sets. His ability to blend historic grandeur with modern maximalism has won him several accolades over the years, including the Fashion Art Director award at the 2024 Hum Style Awards and the Pride of Performance Award in 2021. In an interview with Arab News at his studio in Lahore's posh Gulberg neighborhood, Ali, 34, said his passion for visual storytelling came from a history of childhood bullying. 'When you are bullied, you have to make [up] stories, you have to read stories, so I would get lost in fairytales,' he said. 'I would just start imagining what this world is, what these people are, what is this fantasy that exists out of this world? It started from there.' The stories he read, full of mythology and folklore, led him to start thinking about his identity as a Pakistani and a South Asian. 'Then I was like, 'Why can't we rebuild these memories and these spaces and these places?'' Ali's own studio is a recreation of spaces of the past, a Mughal court in miniature — crafted not from marble and sandstone, but from cardboard, fabric, and imagination. With hand-painted arches, makeshift jalis, and richly colored drapes, the space evokes the grandeur of a bygone empire while laying bare its theatrical artifice. The illusion is deliberate: a paper palace blurring the line between history and performance and reflecting South Asia's enduring nostalgia for lost splendor and the way identity in the region is often reconstructed through fragments — of memory, of myth, of art. What one then sees is not just a recreation of the past but a reinterpretation, inviting a dialogue between heritage and reinvention: 'If Hollywood can create all of this [set design] and we think as Pakistanis that we can't do any of this, then we're at fault. Because we did create the Taj Mahal. We did create the Lahore Fort … If we could do it then, we can do it now.' 'COMBINED MEMORY' One of Ali's most cherished creations was the set for the song 'Pasoori,' the first Coke Studio number to hit one billion views on YouTube Music and the most searched song globally on Google in 2022, the year of its release. Ali, the production designer and art director of the set, crafted it as a communal space, with the bohemian aesthetic of the set, characterized by vibrant colors and eclectic elements, complementing the song's fusion of reggaeton beats with classical South Asian instruments like the rubab. Ali describes the aesthetic as 'the Pakistani vibe,' exemplified by a new generation that had grown up in the era of globalization and social media and was reclaiming public spaces and dressing up and conducting themselves in ways that merged their cultural heritage with contemporary elements. 'It's so interesting that now when I'm sitting and I'm scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and I see these reels of girls wearing either 'saris' and 'ghagras' and they're dancing in Lahore, in old Lahore,' Ali said. But the project closest to Ali's heart is hidden away in the winding, narrow streets of Lahore's historic Gali Surjan Singh near Delhi Gate. It is a concept store, Iqbal Begum, imagined as a tribute to his late dadi or grandmother, a mathematics teacher who passed away in 2014. The store has been built in a centuries-old home that Ali rented from a woman who has lived there before the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan. The walls are adorned with framed pictures of Iqbal Begum and the shop strewn with things that belonged to her, including old table clocks and dial phones and a tub of Nivea cream, a bottle of Oil of Olay lotion, and a coin purse framed together. Ali remembered growing up surrounded by the stories his grandmother told him, including about the violence of the partition. 'She told me a story about how she lost her favorite pen and our house was burned down in front of her eyes and the sense of belonging started happening,' Ali said. 'From that story, this thing of holding on to objects, holding on to people, holding on to stories became very important.' The concept store is thus not only a way to tell the story of Iqbal Begum but also to create shared memories. 'So, for me, every time I tell a story, I'm passing on my memory to someone else, and when they go and tell someone, in a way, it's almost like my dadi is still alive,' Ali added. And the process is two-way, because people show up with their stories also and can connect with the items they see in the store: 'Then it becomes like a combined memory.' Ultimately, it all connects back to the idea of Pakistan for Ali and to preserving its national, personal and collective histories into tangible, emotionally resonant experience. 'I kind of equated it to the bigger grandparent or the larger mother, which is Pakistan, that slowly, slowly all these amazing things that Pakistanis and Pakistan has done, we're slowly letting them fade away,' he said. 'The idea from this dadi telling stories to a child has become about this child telling those stories or trying to tell those stories to the world and saying, 'Hey, we're Pakistan and we're a beautiful country and we do all these things apart from what you're used to hearing about.'.'
